I created the award-winning Insomnia Radio Network in 2004 and was globally recognized as an early podcasting pioneer. In 2006, Insomnia Radio was awarded Best Podcast by Newsweek Online, and the network was praised in the pages of the New York Times, Wired and CMJ.

Since then, I’ve been entrenched in the video game industry and fascinated with the rapid evolution of the technology surrounding it.

I'm addicted to producing professional web content which aims to simultaneously educate and entertain. My column at Forbes is the culmination of these experiences, and I’ll bring my unique voice, background and skillset to deliver memorable content.

I also contribute gaming and technology features to outlets like PCWorld and HotHardware.

Stay in touch with me on Facebook and Twitter. Reach out to me with questions by emailing jevangelho@gmail.com

For Struggling PC Market, It's PC Gamers To The Rescue

Believe it or not, high-end systems like Maingear's F131 (pictured) are becoming the rule, not the exception among PC gamers. | Image credit: Maingear

IDC Insights Research dropped some doom and gloom earlier this year, reporting that Q1 2013 PC shipments were down a drastic 13.9% globally, compared to the same period in 2012. This represented the worst decline in the US since 2006, despite Windows 8 and some inspired hardware to accompany it from the likes of Lenovo, ASUS, and DellDell. Apparently no one told PC gamers about this decline, as a new report from Jon Peddie Research illustrates.

Now more than ever, we’re seeing a decisive separation of so-called “casual” and enthusiast or “hardcore” PC gamers. JPR president Jon Peddie explains that a growing number of users are migrating to tablets and smartphones as the specs of these devices continue to mature. With that shift, the remaining PC users are going considerably high-end. In fact, Peddie confidently states that his research group is “forecasting growth in the most expensive discrete graphics products.”

I couldn’t help but wonder if Peddie knew just how expensive those “discrete graphics products” are (he does). NVIDIA’s GTX Titan boasts 6GB of GDDR5 memory, and averages a $1000 price tag. AMD’s Radeon HD 7990 is currently retailing for approximately $900.

Looking for answers, I reached out to Kelt Reeves, founder of the venerable Falcon Northwest, a company who’s been building custom PCs since the early 1990s. What he offered backed up Peddie’s claims.

“The NvidiaNvidia GeForce Titan is our #1 selling graphics card by far – despite it being the most expensive,” Reeves reveals. “What’s more, our customer for this card is actually buying an average of 1.3 Titans per PC. In other words, a huge number of them are buying two and even three of these monster GPUs in a single system.”

Perhaps Falcon Northwest has a more affluent clientele? I needed at least double confirmation on this, so I spoke to Wallace Santos, CEO and founder of MAINGEAR. “We notice that when it comes to graphics, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770, 780 and Titans are our most popular selections,” Santos confirmed. NVIDIA’s GTX 770 starts at about $400.

Continuing, Santos tells me that “on average most of our customers that are high-end gamers spend around $4k or more.” Surely that’s an anomaly, right? Back over to Reeves at Falcon Northwest: “Our ASP [average sale price] this year is $4,100. An interesting data point: we’ve seen a 16% increase in customer spending on the GPU this year over last.”

So what’s driving these purchases? What bleeding edge tech is causing PC gaming enthusiasts to gleefully hand over wads of cash? Both men offer equally believable answers.

Reeves believes that “the real game-changer for PC gaming this year is the introduction of 4K displays. Games can give you 4K resolution right now, so you don’t need to wait for Hollywood to bring you movies to enjoy [it]. But with 4 times the number of pixels to drive than a 1080P display, 4K demands at least two of the top graphics cards to be able to play 3D games smoothly. Once you’ve seen a PC game running at 4K, no console can even come close.”

Over at Maingear, Santos attributes the rampant growth to “online gaming, e-sports tournaments and having the PC gaming community able to connect more with media outlets such as twitch.tv, PC gaming enthusiasts will always be looking for more performance from their hardware to get the experience and speed they are looking for.”

That sentiment actually mirrors a great point made in JPR’s report. Peddie says that PC gamers continue to “buy and build with a fervency that could be compared to motorcycle, 4×4, and sports car enthusiasts.”

One final note that should leave you agape: Peddie estimates that upcoming PC exclusives like ARMA 3 from Bohemia Interactive will influence $800 million in PC builds.

As always, a friendly reminder that PC gaming isn’t dead, and is nowhere near dying.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

“As always, a friendly reminder that PC gaming isn’t dead, and is nowhere near dying.”

****

PC gaming has been reported as ‘dead’ more times than the average comic book villain.

I suspect that the serious gamers have taken a look at the PS4 and XB1, and decided that the cost of these consoles simply isn’t worth it for the specs of the machines. Especially when you consider that within a year or two both consoles are likely to be totally outclassed by PC’s that are not that much more expensive.

We saw that with the XBox 360 and PS3, but those consoles were at least cheaper than your average PC at the time – which isn’t the case now.

Agreed – I think there is a place for a gamer a step behind the top-priced equipment, and it’s a pretty comfortable place. This trend does do interesting things to the PC market, though. My sainted mother just found her 8-year old tower was defunct, and after looking at the market I realised that everything she needed from a PC could be done with $100 refurbished ex-office computer. If you aren’t a gamer (or a video editor, or a protein analyst), the amount of computing power you need may have topped out a couple of years back. So, meaningful progress comes in e.g. portability and power consumption.

That does interesting things to the market – it’s not a coincidence that desktop Haswell isn’t the progression mobile Haswell is, and has been largely neglected in the marketing….

Consoles in the late 70s and early 80s were often promoted as home computers and featured all the bells and whistles that wouldn’t be common to homes until the early 90s.

There were always those saying PC gaming was doomed compared to the simplistic gaming on consoles.

What can change is that games likely will embrace more complex design that allows for interactions through many formats. It is only logical and with mobile/tablets and almost universal connectivity making it obvious to do.

As someone who has started PC gaming again after the console debuts this summer I can say it’s more about the games. It seems as though the console game publishers are to focused on AAA titles and what they know works. With PC there are just so many Independent publishers for games you can find many you like at a great price with new unexplored types of game play. There’s more competition for software on the PC side helping to bring down pricing. On consoles you’re stuck purchasing content from Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo at the price they set. Although a lot of games may go through Steam for DRM licencing I have bought many Steam games from other outlets like Amazon or Humble Bundle. I think also more people are getting into Multiplayer Online gaming and PC just has way more options. MMORPG, MOBA, RTS, and FPS games are available and most are free to play. I haven’t seen a MOBA on the consoles yet. The free to play game World of Tanks is coming to Xbox but you need an Xbox Gold membership to play. Although initial cost of PC gaming is more to begin with I feel it evens out with the savings in software, upgrades, and not having to subscribe for services. Most Esports games are also on the PC, DOTA 2 International Competition paying out 1.4 million to first place, and the more attention they gain the more people will convert.

PC gaming: Microsoft totally ignored this community and now have shoot themselves in the foot with all the failed PC and Windows 8 sales.

They are the maker of world #1 OS (yes most people use their OSes) and yet they hardly promoted or encouraged PC gaming after XBOX came out.

Its no secret that games are one of the most bought APPS on pad/mobile devices. Why would someone buy an expensive OS and PC just for business? We need to have great games coming to PC. Game publishers, Graphic card makers need to promote and encourage game developers to make more games for PC. They are still the largest community of PC users! Wasnt it obvious all this time?

I am getting a major PC upgrade done for Battlefield 4 this October, so are many of my friends!

I am not the high end PC gamer, but still i am a PC gamer. And i just bought a new pc with haswell i5 and geforce gtx 760 with 256GB of ssd and 8GB of gaming 1600MHz ddr3 ram.

I have never owned a console and there is a reason for that, that is i dont like the gamepad and that if console comes out you cant upgrade it in time cause the console will be out in that hardware for 7 years or more like with the ps3 and xbox. So that means all games must be with bad graphics aal these years. They will get better but still they are limited in the old hardware system and then the stupid system of pay for internet that you already have. Even for games that dont have multiplayer options you need to pay for the console internet it’s from my standards beyond stupid. I expect to get device for free if i need to pay fee for every month so i can buy games that cost to much. Btw all these games suffer in advancingn cause the consoles have all one base hardware that all the new games must run on for the next 7 or more years. For pc gaming games will not suffer cause you always can upgrade your pc with parts like new graphics card or add more ram or change your cpu or even over clock your system parts. PC game makers just dont like to make games on PC cause there are bigger market for pirates but that is on console to so whats the differance.

The new thing on PC’s is that region block. If they make region block then make the price for games on ragion based to . For me as i am from Estonia and get the games from Russia cause the game cost there somewhere around 20-30 euro per game but in here they cost same like for everyone in the world 50 – 70 euro that is to much especially when you buy half the game cause of the DLC packs that come out later and what we get payed in the month period from work.

It’s easy solution for fighting the pirates. Make the games price lower so everyone can buy them and then lots of people will buy them instead of pirate them. But not they cant cause that means they get less profit. For that i must ask how so ? If 1 miljon people will buy a game for 10 euro it then they get 10 miljon euros, but if only 100 000 peaple will buy a game with 60 euro they get 6 miljon euro.

They really need to understand that not all people over the world can afford 60 euro for one game every month if there is not coming out only one game for a month. My country avarage pay is around 700 euro per month and from that goes out tax pluss all you need to pay for internet and apparment fees where you will have like 300 euro for month to survive, so that means 60 euro for one game is already something you really need to think of. While if the game would only cost 10-20 euro then you can buy it instead of pirate it.

If you think about it then the worlds population of 20% is the people who can buy games and have no problem with it, but the 80% of people who cant cause the price is pointless high for them who think better is to buy food then a game. if the price would be around 10-20 then the 80% of worlds people can afford them and there for game makers would get more profit and there would be less pirates.

In a plus side for PC gameing is that on PC you can modify the games. For example Skyrim, there is like 1000 mods for the game made by users. Texture packs and more missions and so on.

“Believe it or not, high-end systems like Maingear’s F131 (pictured) are becoming the rule, not the exception among PC gamers.”

It is this kind of disconnect that is shown from the press to the real world of gamers that is distressing. Visit a LAN event, look at Steam numbers, high end systems are not even close to becoming the “rule” when it comes to PC gamers.

In fact the opposite is true. No longer does a PC gamer need a high end CPU that is overclocked with a $300 video card to have an amazing gaming experience. $200 video cards and $150 processors at stock speeds can deliver the same experience gaming at 1080 as many high end rigs.

What’s more is the days of every new game stretching a system is long dead. Now in a world of cross platform developing the demands on a PC are less than in previous years and this is a trend that is growing. Only one or two major releases a year really push modern hardware, most works just fine on mid range or even older hardware.

This article is not true journalism but rather a paid infomercial for high PCs.

ROFL, well Forbes journalist integrity seems to have left your building. Let me get this straight the person writing your articles about tech and gaming is selling custom built, over prices high end rigs? No conflict of interest there…

Still does not change the fact that the article is based on a premise that does not bear out in the reality of todays PC gamers. Falcon Northwest and Maingear are both great companies but they are, in number of gaming PCs in use minor players. They are Boutique providers like Lamborghini dealers.

Lets look at the claim of Titan sales. I do not doubt that their customers buy Titans. However at a LAN event just two weeks ago with 150 or so machines to look at only about 4 had multi cards and NONE had a Titan in it.

This article might be correct for the uber high end PC gamer but they make up 2% at the most of PC gamers, not even close to a norm.

PC gaming probably isn’t dead but it certainly isn’t getting any better from where I’m standing.

Ironically, the games are developed on a PC for consoles and then ported back to PC, often badly with bugs galore. Then there’s all the console only titles and the fact that most of the advertisments for all the decent AAA titles seem to omit or forget PC as a platform altogether….

Take the BF3 game for example… Touted as being PC lead platform which never was, then the game was released half finished for PC and is still plagued with bugs some 2 years later and then out pops BF4 which is just as bad if not worse.

PC gamers are getting the rough end of the deal all the while. I absolutely detest consoles. They bring nothing to the gaming table other than holding back progress due to their stagnating hardware.

I seriously think we live in a world where backwards progress is the norm.